Last Sunday’s election in Sweden saw a strong surge by the country’s Feminist Initiative (FI) party, but not quite enough to win seats in parliament, British daily newspaper The Guardian reports.
Polls predicted that FI would garner the 4 percent necessary to win several of the 349 parliamentary seats, but the final tally was just over 3 percent. The strong showing by FI, though, sends a clear message to Sweden that gender equality is an important issue.
Gender equality and feminist activism started in the 1960s in Sweden and spawned the radical feminist network Grupp 8, according to The Guardian. In the 1990s, Grupp 8 threatened to launch a feminist party if more was not done by parliament to increase gender equality. In 2005, the Feminist Initiative party was formed to advance its agenda.
FI was successful in gaining more than 2.5 percent of the vote, which now makes it eligible to receive tax-funded party financing for the first time.
Voters ousted Sweden’s center-right alliance from power after an eight-year run. The red-green bloc, which is made up of the formerly dominant Social Democratic party and the increasingly strong Green party, took control of parliament.
In other big election news, the right-wing Sweden Democrats party tripled its vote from the last parliamentary election to over 12 percent. The party’s roots lie in the neo-Nazi mobilization of the early 1990s and anti-Semitic associations and organizations that were active in the 1930s and 1940s, The Guardian reports.
The power base of the Sweden Democrats comes from small towns and areas where there is high unemployment and discontent.
The Feminist Initiative draws its strength from Sweden’s major cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Uppsala.
Although it failed to gain any seats in parliament, the Feminist Initiative party has brought feminist issues to the top of the agenda in the country. Many left-wing commentators, The Guardian says, say that mending the divisions between genders, classes and individuals over the next four years holds the key to halting the rise of the far-right.